Silver Bells & Cuckoo Children
by The Very Last Valkyrie
Summary: Though April may be more famous for its showers, it’s important to remember that peace and goodwill should last all year round. Here’s how our favourite UES-ers keep the Yule time gay in customary style. NJBC, N/S, C/B, future fic.
1. Silver Bells & Cuckoo Children

**_Yes, I know it's not Christmas, but I watched Roman Holiday and it put me in the mood! Anyway, this is more N/S, C/B than actual NJBC, and it is a little heavy on the Chuck and Blair part (because let's face it, we're all still reeling a little from Inglorious Bassterds). Let the non-holiday hijinks commence!_**

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**Silver Bells & Cuckoo Children**

_Serena_

Serena was born fashionably late, or so Lily claims, and to this day the banner of 'better late than never' seems to hover unseen and omnipresent over her head.

It's snowing on Christmas Eve, and a tiny baby bump that's only just beginning to become familiar is jutting from between Serena's hips as she hurries down the street, thick coat wrapped tightly around her and head bowed against the cold. Nate was always so easy to buy for, when he was just her friend and then her boyfriend; but now he's the father of her baby, she can't seem to decide what will suit him best. A new watch? A new HD TV for the den? Everyone else's present was so simple: jewellery for Lily, a new iPod for Eric, a dress for Blair and ties for Chuck –so why does the man she loves have to be so difficult?

A flash of colour catches her eye as she passes the second-to-last store window in the row, and she stops. The display is a patchwork of folded cashmere sweaters in every colour of the rainbow, but Serena can't help being drawn to the one closest to the window, the one that it seems that, if she wanted to, she could reach out and touch. It's soft, it's sumptuous and it's blue – baby blue.

She smiles.

_**~#~**_

_Chuck_

"And as you can see, revenue is up almost a hundred fold on the properties you recently acquired –"

Chuck can't stand the his advisor's incessant droning. He's already been in this meeting for two and a half hours, it's Christmas Eve and he can't find anyone to get him a coffee. Trying to focus on what the wretched man is saying, Chuck loosens his paisley patterned tie (a Bass man never loses his flair for pageantry) and blinks several time, though the figures on the page before him blur and trip over each other, like drunken waiters in a bar full of fools, illegible black squiggles which make his eyes burn and his head throb. He needs – or better, a scotch.

When it's finally over and he returns to his office, his secretary offers him a smile and he wonders why. On entering, however, he understands. There is a crystal vase on the desk, and it is full of blowsy, just opening, violently pink peonies: the calling card of only one woman.

He smiles.

_**~#~**_

_Nate_

"Are you looking for anything in particular, Sir?"

Nate swallows. He feels possibly more exposed at this moment than he ever has before in his life – his mouth is dry, his pulse is thudding, and his palms are so slick and sweaty he doesn't want to put them on the glass case before him in case they mark it. The clerk raises an eyebrow enquiringly, and Nate clears his throat and collects himself (_come on, it_'_s not going to hurt , grow a pair__, will you?_).

"Yes," he says, looking the man straight in the eye. "My girlfriend's three months pregnant, and I want to propose to her on Christmas Day, but I don't just want a traditional ring – I want something special." He gestures outside. "She's always loved the snow, and I was wondering about a theme, like...like snowflakes, maybe?"

The clerk smiles at the nervous young man, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his well-cut suit and his heart on his sleeve. "I think I have just the thing. Right this way, sir."

_**~#~**_

_Blair_

Blair doesn't bother knocking, just crashes through the door in a whirl of Dior and Chanel No. 5 and cheeks flushed pink from the cold. There is snow in her hair and on the collar of her coat, and she doesn't even take a breath before dropping her bags and launching herself at him, legs around his waist and hands raking through his hair as she smiles and laughs and kisses, all at the same time.

Four hours later they are lying in the middle of the floor surrounded by discarded clothes, breathing hard and staring up at the ceiling.

"I take it this means your divorce came through in time for the holidays."

Blair turns her head to kiss him, one perfectly polished finger tilting up his chin so his mouth can meet hers.

"Though I don't see why it should make any difference. We've spent the last five consecutive Christmases in bed together regardless of marital obligations."

She swats at him. "Of course it makes a difference! This year is the year you acknowledge that it's my shampoo in your bathroom, my dresses in your closet and my hairbrush on your nightstand, so you'd better hurry up and marry me before Valentine's Day."

He frowns. "Why before then?"

She huffs a sigh. "Because, dumbass, there's a Bass bun in my oven and I don't want to look fat in my wedding dress."

_He_ kisses her this time, over and over, asking her to say it over and over again – '_Yes, I_'_m having your baby, you idiot, I'm having your baby._' The clock tolls twelve and as Christmas Day arrives Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf have their arms wrapped around each other, kissing like they'll never stop, waiting with baited breath and beating hearts for the start of a new beginning and a new life.

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**_I liked the idea of having Serena and Blair both pregnant at around the same time so that their kids could grow up together, and also because the unconditional love between the parents of a child - both for that child and for each other - never fails to astound me. I couldn't put Chuck and Blair together officially because I still want to bitch slap him (a little bit), but they had to come right in the end because I trust that they always will._**

**_Reviews = love._**


	2. Chuck & Blair: Christmas I

**_I got a special request for more info about the five Christmases Chuck and Blair spent together before the events of 'Silver Bells & Cuckoo Children'.  
Just as a general FYI, I would place Chuck and Blair's age at around their late twenties, and Blair is married to a prominent businessman. Chuck is not married, has never married, and has not loved since Blair. He has, however, had a series of unsuccessful and short-lived hookups with dark eyed brunettes who were somehow never quite right.  
So here it is: Christmas #1._**

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**Christmas #1**

He sits by what must constitute a roaring fire for the modern age – a line of space-age geysers spurting jets of flame in an endless, orange line. His suit is black, his hair is tousled, and he can't help wondering why he didn't stay in Singapore for the holidays. Just the sight of the huge Christmas trees in every store window managed to dredge up bad memories of doing silly, stupid, saccharine couple things: like ice skating.

New York must have laughed itself silly.

There is a knock at the door, which is strange in itself. And, when he gets up to answer it, stranger still is the person behind it.

Blair.

She is thinner than she ought to be and a lack of sunlight has turned her hair two shades darker, but she still smells the same; her perfume washing over him like flowers and spun gold. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them she is smiling apprehensively.

"Merry Christmas."

"What are you doing here?"

Her eyes blaze momentarily before calming, their own geysers retreating back into deceptive, doe-like depths. "I haven't seen you since my...since...since we died."

_The day we died_: that was how she referred to her wedding day. Some artistic person (Serena, probably) had added her heart pin to the froth of lace at one sleeve and Blair had plucked it free, pressing it into his hand. '_Today we die, Bass,_' she'd said softly, her eyes glowing with unshed tears. '_But I want you to keep this._' Her smile had been brave, a tiny candle shining in the darkness of all his despair. '_It's yours, after all._' One last kiss with the salt of tears – both their tears – as a silent, terrible third party and she had left, off up the aisle towards a destiny in which he played no part.

"He's out of the country, and I thought...maybe I shouldn't be here."

"Maybe you shouldn't," he agrees, but leaves the door open as he turns away anyway. He feels more than hears her follow him in: the warm presence at his back, that perfume stealing further into the room and his senses.

"You're reading _Les Liaisons Dangereuses_," she comments, lifting the book from the arm of his chair and turning it over in her hands. "My second favourite."

He pours himself three fingers of scotch and drains the glass, not caring that she is watching. "It reminds me of a girl I used to know."

She stiffens – shoulders jumping together, spine stiffer than a ramrod – before whirling on him, her dress flaring out around her knees like Marilyn Monroe. "I know you're suffering, okay? I get it! I get it better than anyone! But how do you think I feel?" She advances toward him, knocking over the scotch glass and paying no heed as it first bounces, then rolls across the carpet. One hand grasps his chin, forcing his face up as it has so many times before. "The drunken texts at three in the morning: '_I'm a prick and I'm still in love with you_'? How do you think I explained those? How do you think they made me feel?"

"You don't feel."

"I don't _feel_?!" Her grip becomes bruising and she pulls him down to her, lips pressing against his in an agonising kiss of fire and loss. Her hand leaves his chin to rake across his scalp and his arms go automatically to her waist, to that tiny waist that he wants to squeeze until it snaps and let them die together all over again. Blair's tears are mingling with his once again in a fiery baptism of body and soul, and he barely notices as the objects around them smash, only aware of the sigh of silk as her dress slides from her body and his sombre black suit is somehow abandoned to the floor.

They end up on the floor that time, on the sheepskin rug in front of the space-age fireplace. His fingers trace the mesmerising curve of her arm and she smiles sleepily at him.

"Oh, that's nice. I missed that."

"What, the sex or the post coital glow?"

She laughs, laying her lips to his shoulder by way of recompense for all those long months of absence. "Both. But more – more you being you, I suppose." She looks at him with her large dark eyes. "There's no one like you, Charles Bass. There never will be."


	3. Chuck & Blair: Christmas II

**Christmas #2**

The second year is harder, because it burns like liquor on the way down. What little spirit she had mustered for the holidays is consumed by pyromania, by a mouth and body swollen with bruises and bites, by the tenderness between her thighs. Neither of them spoke, and the only noises heard for that one long night when bells were meant to ring out and the world begin anew were the sounds of battle - the battle between them, the _Ihateyousomuch _or _Neverl__etmego_ battle that's raged ever since they were sixteen years old. Sex isn't absolution, she should've realised; but then it takes two to tango, and only one to keep the secret.

"Explain that."

"What?"

"Explain it."

His voice is harsh, hard with emptiness, and she presses her face into the pillow to let a few quiet tears disappear inobtrusively into its softness. "I don't know what that was."

He presses his body to her back, angry and hungry and snarling in her ear. "Yes, you do - or was I being too subtle for you? This is all you want from me, so now you've had it you can get out."

"Chuck -"

"Out."

Blair flips over with lightning speed, and although there's not a whisper of clothing or an inch of space between them she doesn't care. Her skin is on fire, her face is on fire, her heart is on fire with sadness and rage. "Don't you make me out to be a whore," she hisses. "Because I'm not. You don't get to call me a whore, because the only one around here who thinks the best way to heal his wounds by getting them licked is you." She's breathing hard, near enough directly into his mouth, and she damn well hopes that sharing breath is enough to make _him_ feel it. "And I am not one of your pay-per-view whores, so just you try and kick me out."

"Whore," he says aloud, and she slaps him. Once one cheek is red, warm beneath her fingers, she backhands him across the other one and lets the reward come through in his gritted teeth.

"Adulterous whore," he offers, and she hits him in the mouth hard enough to draw blood and make them both pant.

"You always did like being hurt, didn't you?" She sneers, one perfect fingernail raking down his cheek and raising a cruel mark. "Like being spanked because Mother wasn't around to do it, right?"

It's his turn and he grabs her by the nape of her neck, by the long hair growing there in dark, glossy waves. She shrieks in astonishment and pain, and he bites down on the soft creamy verge where shoulder moves into throat. Marked, irrevocably - the bruise it leaves is scarlet, sinister, ready to be deep purple and sloe plum blue. Her fingers scrabble uselessly at his chest, bringing up further welts, and then a well placed kick sets them tumbling off the bed and onto the cold floor, ripping at each other like creatures depraved, deprived by circumstance, denied one another for too long and sent to the dark recesses of one another's minds for use only in the cultivation of sticky sheets and sheens of sweat and the burning below the waistline which can mean pleasure or pain.

They're not sure when it turns into sex, because the feelings are so similar: anger, ecstasy, blind panic. All they know is that she's on top and sobbing and he's below and he hates her. The moments after are silent, painful; then he holds her close, one ripple of two people like one body and lets her cry for hours, tears and sweat mingling on his chest.


	4. Chuck & Blair: Christmas III

**_I'm vidding right now to Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson's 'Winter Song', and no matter how many times I listen to it, I always mishear the line 'is love alive?' as 'is love a lie?'. Couple that with the fact that today is my first snow day of the year and you get this.  
Enjoy._**

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**Christmas #3**

Lily's become so observant – too observant – that the next year she invites him for the day, to share it with her family. He, however, doesn't feel like souring their Christmas cheer with his customary Christmas gloom and indecision, and declines. He's not sure if he'll get up for the duration of the holiday, just lie in bed and try to get through it. Kismet doesn't aid him, with a wake up call at five am and chronic insomnia thereafter. He's not even in the mood to drink or drug his body into submission, to lull it to sleep some other way; in itself this is odd, and he lies still, cold and empty.

Why in the world would housekeeping let her in? This isn't her home anymore.

The way she looks reminds him of the Snowflake Ball, for all it's a distant, fading memory most notable for being the night his father died. There is that same look of being caught off balance, of having brought a switchblade to a gun fight and now being sorry for it. She blinks at him.

"Why aren't you up?"

"Should I be?"

She is wearing her Audrey trench coat, and she folds her arms. "Weren't you expecting me?"

And the opening and closing of the damn door has brought all the sounds and smells of the season with her, most unfortunately. There really is no other explanation for why he can smell sugar cookies as he props himself up on one elbow. "Oh, I forgot, we have a running engagement for this day: you get your annual orgasm and I get to wonder what the hell you're doing here in the first place."

"It's not like that."

"Isn't it?" He looks out of the window, away from her pale face. "It's all a lie, after all. Your whole life is a lie."

"True," she admits. "But I'm honest when I'm with you."

He chuckles darkly. "Are you?"

"Are we a lie to you?"

"You tell me."

Her anger snaps like a whip crack across his face, branding one cheek with a white hot palm. "Was that a lie?"

"No. That was a slap."

"Then how about this?" Her lips are fierce on the scorching flesh, though there's no hope of breathing life into what's already been lost. "Was that a lie?"

"No."

Her fingers frame his face, still cool in leather gloves against the wind, and she sits down beside him on his bed as she used to and kisses his mouth, a brief dart of agony he knows she shares and which is gone too quickly to merit a response. "And that? Was that a lie?"

"No."

She slips one hand inside the purple paisley of today's pyjamas, and he kicks himself for not remembering that these were the ones he liked better on her. This time, the flat of her pulse finds his heart and rests there, denying it the silent right to beat alone. "This is beating, which makes you alive." Her dark head is bent, lashes just shadows on flushed cheeks. She looks up at him, face so close to his that he doesn't know if he can hold her gaze this way. "To deny this is to deny you're alive." Their lips briefly touch once again, and her eyes glitter: frost on the edge of rainfall. "And I don't come here because having sex with you makes me happy."

"Why, then?"

"Because being with you makes me happy," she replies simply. "And I'm going to sit here with you and talk about your stock portfolio and how much you hate your latest girlfriend, and then you're going to hold me in a little while when I've calmed down."

"Merry Christmas, Waldorf."

It's hardly even her name anymore, but still she smiles. "Merry Christmas, Bass."


	5. Chuck & Blair: Christmas IV

**_There are a couple of sex/BDSM terms this Christmas (though no explicit content), so here are their definitions.  
Soft limit: an area/action the participant is willing only to experiment and explore, e.g. being willing to try being blindfolded.  
Hard limit: an area/action the participant is not willing and may never be willing to explore, e.g. not being willing to be slapped.  
Safe word: a word which is used to warn the other participant they are pushing too far, sometimes called an 'amber' safe word; a word which halts action completely, sometimes called a 'red' safe word. The latter is the kind I reference in this chapter.  
Enjoy.  
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**Christmas #4**

"I thought I was having a baby," she repeats, the same words she's repeated all day and all of the night before that. He doesn't know what to do – she was having a baby, they both know that, and now she isn't.

They're both sitting on the floor, which is odd for them. You walk on the floor, you screw on the floor, but you don't sit on the floor. Not if you're them.

"Would you like some tea?"

She nods.

But Chuck Bass doesn't know how to make tea, and he's damned if he's letting anyone in on this festive mess to do it for him. He was expecting Blair at some point over the course of the holiday, but not at nine on Christmas Eve with no coat and, most alarming of all, no shoes. What else could he do but watch her: put her in the shower, sit on the closed toilet seat and watch her, dress her in a robe, put her to bed, sit in a chair and watch her. She wants to talk about it, but her body isn't ready. She trips over her tongue, and all that will come out is, 'I thought I was having a baby'.

He still doesn't know how to make tea.

Nowadays, coffee comes up hot in its pot with tea delivered for the few free radicals who want it. All that's in the cupboard of that persuasion is a few dusty leaves that may or may not be hallucinogenic – maybe that would help? Sparkling palm trees have to be better than Christmas morning set to a soundtrack of slamming doors.

The kettle has something metallic on the bottom, so he assumes the leaves shouldn't go in there. A pan is chosen, a pan that the young man who owns a multinational corporation didn't know he possessed. He fills it from the faucet and sets it to boil, and then he is selfish. Then he presses his back to the counter and tries not to hear the words she can't stop saying.

When the stove sounds with hisses and seethes, the leaves are added. Is there too much water? He's never bothered to ask how Blair takes her tea, though he can reel off her mood-dependent coffee orders without pausing for breath. He knows what oils to request when she visits a spa, what oils to keep on the nightstand. He knows how far she can be pushed, which is a little beyond what she believes of herself; her hard limits run deep but the soft are malleable, desires ever shifting and appetite increasing. She never once used their safe word.

Neither did he.

The tea is not tea, the liquid still colourless. Chuck tries to think laterally and move it away from the heat, baring the flame in the process. It leaps up his arm: there is a yell and the scent of singed hair. The pan clatters to the ground and spills boiling water, those few leaves in every direction. More yelling draws in even such an invalid as she, her eyes as huge and curious as a child's.

"Go away," he snarls, not thinking and possibly not caring.

She closes her cold fingers over the raw flesh, and the burn of their ice is almost as bad as the burn of the fire. When they both reach room temperature, she pulls the sink and soaks him to the elbow, pushing the arm back into place every time the mouth protests that it's fine, he doesn't need this.

That he was supposed to be taking care of her.

His arm is patted dry, the rest of him soaking. Her bare feet are wet.

"I thought I was having a baby," she says conversationally, and then sits down in the spilled water. He sits with her – he's already sodden, after all – an arm around her slender, shaking shoulders. It dawns on him that sweetened tea is thought to help shock, and he finds himself on the verge of self-depreciating laughter even as she continues, "But I'm not, am I?"

"No. You're not."

"I should get a divorce, shouldn't I?"

He bites down hard on his tongue and refuses to answer.


End file.
